Steven Ball

Rastko Novakovic

Concrete Heart Land is an experimental documentary which exposes the social cleansing of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South London. It marks the moment that the housing estate was finally lost as social housing to ma...

Concrete Heart Land

Concrete Heart Land is an experimental documentary which exposes the social cleansing of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South London. It marks the moment that the housing estate was finally lost as social housing to make way for an unjust 'regeneration' scheme.

Over the course of 2012 and 2013, Ball and Novakovic filmed panoramic video images of the estate and interiors of some of the Heygate flats, both of which feature in the film. These images are of the estate as it was at its end, blighted by Southwark Council's lack of maintenance and their leasing of it as a film set for 'grimy', 'urban' and 'dystopian' cinematic settings.

Assembled from 12 years of archive materials, Concrete Heart Land charts the struggles of the local community to keep their homes, stay living in the area, and maintain communal benefits in the face of extreme development pressures. Throughout the film we hear the community engaging in some of the crucial battles with elected officials, planners and barristers, in municipal planning meetings, public enquiries and interviews.

Inserted among these recordings are various sections of a performance Ball and Novakovic staged in 2012 on the then still-inhabited estate. An assembled group of past and present residents, community activists and critics of the Heygate plans, chant texts composed from phrases used in the Regeneration Masterplan. The performance parodies the technical language of regeneration and the aspirational language of gentrification.

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Concrete Heart Land

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